Prerequisites

Prerequisites include supported Linux operating systems, container and database configurations, open network ports, and administrative privileges for running scripts and managing containers.

Before proceeding with the installation of IBM Optim, ensure that the following system and environment requirements are in place:

User permissions

To install IBM Optim Data Privacy, users must have the following permissions:

• Administrative root privileges are required to install prerequisite packages.
• After the package installation is complete, all subsequent steps, including running shell scripts and managing containerized services, must be performed by a non-root user.
• The installation administrator should operate as a standard user, without using sudo or su to root commands.

Operating system

The operating system must be a supported Linux® distribution:

• Red Hat® Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.4 to 9.8
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10.0

Operating system packages

The following operating system packages must be in place:

• podman-docker
• python3-pip
• slirp4netns
• fuse-overlayfs

Container engine

The container engine has the following requirements:

• Podman 5.4 or higher
• Podman Compose 1.4 or higher

Additional tools and software

The following tools support IBM Optim Data Privacy deployments:

• OpenSSL - used for security configuration during IBM Optim installation.
• jq - used to process, parse, and manipulate JSON included in the installation scripts.
• cURL - used for post-installation verification and health checks of IBM Optim services.

Network access

Ensure that all ports specified in the .env configuration file are open and accessible.

Storage volumes

The host system must provide sufficient storage for the IBM Optim installation and data directories. The minimum disk space requirement is 250 GB for the installation path and 250 GB for the archive storage path.

If you are using extended or external storage (for example, a SAN or NAS drive mounted to the Linux host), the following conditions must be met before you run the setup script:

• Each mounted volume must be formatted with a supported file system (such as xfs or ext4) and mounted at its intended host path.
• Storage paths set in the .env configuration file must use the host-side mount path as shown in the Mounted on column of the df -h command output. For example:

  OPTIM_LOG_DIR=/mnt/optim/logs

• If Podman container images will reside on a non-root disk, first create the required directories and assign ownership as root:

  sudo mkdir -p /mount-point/podman/data/containers/storage
  sudo mkdir -p /mount-point/podman/config/containers
  sudo chown -R optim:optim /mount-point/podman

  Then, in the same shell session as the non-root installation user, export the following variables before running the setup script:

  export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/mount-point/podman/config
  export XDG_DATA_HOME=/mount-point/podman/data

  Important: These variables must be set in the same shell session as the setup script. They are not inherited by child processes and will fall back to root defaults if not exported beforehand. The non-root user must have write permission on the mount point before exporting these variables.

Tip: Run df -h to confirm that your extended volumes are recognized by the operating system and to identify the correct mount paths to use in the .env file. For more information, see Using mounted or extended storage volumes (SAN and NAS).

Certificate file permissions

The installation pre-check validates that the optim.crt certificate file has the correct permissions before installation proceeds. Ensure that optim.crt has permissions set to 640. You can verify and correct this by running the following command:

chmod 640 optim.crt